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Instead, what people are talking about is the accident that happened to French pair skaters Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis in the first round of the competition, and the ISU's rules that permitted them to reskate and get credit for their program.

What happened is this: within the first minute of their program, Abitbol took such a bone-jarring fall on a throw triple axel attempt, hitting her back on the ice, that she had to be carried off the ice in a daze to receive medical attention.

In other sports, an accident that leaves a competitor even temporarily unable to continue is usually considered grounds for immediate disqualification. But that's not the case in figure skating.

According to ISU rule 351, "if circumstances arise which jeopardize the safety of the competitor on account of injury or unexpected damage to his clothing or equipment," the referee must permit the skater an option to restart. The referee can either allow the competitor to continue immediately from the point of interruption, if the problem can be corrected without delay; or, if that is not possible, to reskate the entire program at the end of their group. Furthermore, if the skater appears to require medical attention, the referee must, under the rules, allow the competitor the option of reskating at the end of the group.

This is exactly how the referee handled the situation with Abitbol and Bernadis in Lyon. But the additional circumstance that caused so much controversy was that, prior to taking the fall in their first attempt at skating their program, they had made other mistakes as well, and these were effectively wiped out when they were given a second chance to skate their program. Some fans have not only complained that this was unfair to the other competitors, but have even gone as far as to allege that the French team might have faked an injury in order to get a fresh start after starting out so badly.

So there is now an outcry to change the rules either to disqualify skaters who cannot continue after accidents that are essentially their own fault, or to require skaters to always restart from the point of interruption even if they must come back at the end of the group. But there are reasons why both of these suggestions are not good ideas.

In the first place, it is important to realize that the current rule exists specifically to protect the safety of the skaters and to ensure that they will not be penalized in the judging if they have to interrupt their program to correct a safety-related problem. If skaters are afraid they might be disqualified or penalized if they stop, it would encourage them to try to continue to skate even under conditions that put their safety or health unnecessarily at risk.

Secondly, while such accidents, interruptions, and restarts do happen from time to time in skating, there is little evidence that skaters are abusing the privilege. Indeed, the reverse seems to be true. Skaters are trained to perform their programs from start to end without interruption in competition, and they are typically so focused on doing so that it usually takes an unquestionably serious problem before they'll stop.

This writer has personally witnessed at least as many incidents where skaters ought to have stopped, but didn't, as cases where they actually did stop: Loose boot laces or pants stirrups dragging on the ice creating a tripping hazard, skaters who were clearly dazed after hitting their heads on the ice in a fall, pairs with bloody noses from a collision, dancers who sliced their fingers open on their partner's skate blade, skaters who spent their entire program dodging items thrown onto the ice by spectators, skaters who kept going to the end of their program with no music after their tape jammed in the machine, and so on.

Part of the reason why skaters are so reluctant to interrupt their programs in such situations is because doing so is seen as a disadvantage in and of itself, no matter which of the restart options ends up being applied.

In the case of reskating the entire program, if the original interruption happened after the skater had already completed a significant part of the program, they're likely to be that much more tired the second time around.

Sarah Abitbol shook off a fall in the short program to finish second in the pairs event with Stephane Bernadis. (AP)

And, in the case of an immediate restart from the point of interruption, it still often takes a few minutes to resolve the problem and get the music cued up to the right place again, and it affects both the skater's concentration and the judges' perception of the "harmonious composition of the program as a whole" element of the presentation mark. Requiring skaters to pick up from the point of interruption, but at the end of the group -- and possibly separated from the first half of their program by the performances of up to five other skaters -- would only make things that much more difficult to judge.

A further reason why skaters are often reluctant to interrupt their programs is that there's already an awareness that they might be seen as fakers or cheaters for doing so. For example, Tonya Harding has been widely accused, even by the event referee, of deliberately unfastening her dress after missing the opening jump in her short program at the 1993 U.S. Championships in order to get a reskate. Nonetheless, videotape from the competition clearly shows that the accident happened just as Harding said it did: The hooks on the back of her costume had popped open before the jump.

And this brings us to a further problem with any attempt to change the rules regarding restarts: Clearly, referees are not immune from making incorrect judgement calls about the nature of accidents.

Another example of such a mistake happened at the U.S. Championships back in 1989, when there were a rash of incidents involving skaters with broken boot laces. At that time, the USFSA's rulebook included less specific rules that only addressed the case of accidents that were not the fault of the skater, instead of the current language shared with the ISU rulebook. There was a huge controversy when the referee of the dance event permitted April Sargent and Russ Witherby to restart their program from the beginning after they had to stop because of a broken lace, but the referee of the pairs event refused to allow Natalie and Wayne Seybold the same option when they had a similar problem. It was reported variously at the time that the pairs referee either thought no reskate should be allowed on the grounds that the skaters themselves were at fault, that she did not consider the problem serious enough to interfere with their skating, or that she simply made a mistake and misinterpreted the rule.

The beauty of the current "no-fault" rule regarding restarts is that it is extremely simple. It treats all problems that impede the skaters' performance in exactly the same way, whether the problem is an injury that requires first aid, a stop in the music, debris on the ice, interference by spectators, or trouble with the skaters' blades, boots, laces, or clothing. Always giving the competitors the benefit of the doubt avoids putting the referee in the position of having to make potentially controversial or incorrect on-the-spot judgment calls about whose fault the trouble is, or whether it is serious enough to justify a fresh start. The only decision the referee must make is whether the problem can be corrected immediately or not.

A final point is that the rule regarding restarts applies not only to the handful of elite competitors one sees on TV, but also to the many thousands of skaters who compete at all levels of the sport, the vast majority of whom are children. These skaters get only one chance each year to participate in qualifying competitions. What useful purpose would be served by disqualifying them on a technicality, or denying them an opportunity to reskate after a freak accident, when it is just as easy to give them an opportunity to compose themselves and try again to give their best performance?